An evil person is one who exploits or harms most everyone he/she encounters; the question of the utmost importance is do evil people share certain personality characteristics? Perhaps personality type has nothing to do with evil. We all know that every person has made bad moral choices at one time or another so perhaps people who repeatedly make bad moral choices are no different than anyone else.
There are many reasons to consider whether evil people have a special or different personality type. For Lovefraud readers, the best reason is to define and learn to recognize a group of people to avoid.
The assertion that evil people share a common personality type has profound philosophical and practical implications. This assertion implies that while occasionally doing evil is part of all of us, repeatedly doing evil is not. But what does repeatedly mean? Shouldn’t everyone who has made a bad moral choice get a second chance? What about those who have made two bad choices? Perhaps if we can identify an evil person by his/her characteristics, then we can say that he/she should not be given another chance.
The PCLR is born
I believe it was this line of thinking that lead Dr. Robert Hare to develop his Psychopathy Checklist, now Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCLR). He was working in the prison system and he wanted to describe the characteristics of people most likely to re-offend. He wanted to identify the evil doers.
Dr. Hare was very successful. The PCLR does identify a group of people who are likely to re-offend and who are very evil. But, somehow this attempt to define with a rating scale, a group of criminals who are most likely to re-offend has become much more. The results of this one instrument are increasingly seen as defining a personality type called psychopathy. It turns out that fancy statistics on the answers to the PCLR reveal that some of the answers group together in “factors.” These factors have become the basis for defining psychopathy itself.
The psychopathic personality is more complex than the PCLR
As Drs. Lynam and Widiger point out in their recent paper Using a general model of personality to identify the basic elements of psychopathy, “In the original derivations, the authors (Hare and colleagues) were fairly careful about referencing the factor structure of the instrument (PCLR) rather than the composition of psychopathy”¦ Since that time, however, the measure has almost become the construct (psychopathy), and more recent authors are more likely to write about the structure of psychopathy than the structure of the instrument.”
Lynam and Widiger suggest, and I agree “that factor analyses of the PCL-R are unlikely to reveal the core components of psychopathy.” Therefore, the use of the PCLR to define the psychopathic personality is problematic. It is more useful to find out if there is indeed a “personality type” that is prone to evil. The best way to do this is to use a personality test that has been developed to understand personality in general (the NEO PI-R*, method 1), in conjunction with an inventory like the PCLR (method 2) and expert ratings (method 3). With these methods combined we can describe the personality type of those prone to evil and then extend the findings to non-criminals.
The evil personality
Using these methods, Lynam and Widiger have demonstrated that there is a personality type prone to evil. So now I will tell you who to avoid, and also more importantly who to seek out!
“We believe that these 12 traits** for which there is agreement across all three methods, constitute the core elements of psychopathy. According to these traits, psychopathy consists of extremely low agreeableness”¦The psychopath is cunning and manipulative, greedy and exploitive, oppositional and combative, boastful and arrogant, and callous and ruthless. Relatedly, the psychopath lacks interpersonal warmth. The psychopath is pan-impulsive, marked by the impulsive end of each of the personality pathways to impulsive behavior”¦ The psychopath also appears immune to embarrassment and shame, potentially important emotions for the social control of behavior. Not surprisingly, the psychopath is also undependable and unethical.”
The Inner Triangle again
I believe that the three clusters of personality traits Lynam and Widiger have identified correspond to what I have called The Inner Triangle. The lack of agreeableness and warmth relate to ability to love. Identify a psychopath by his/her inability to really love and take care of others.
Identify a psychopath/sociopath by his/her poor impulse control. Lastly, psychopaths have a lack of moral emotions- embarrassment, guilt and particularly shame. This lack of moral emotions impairs moral reasoning in the psychopath/sociopath.
The combination of poor ability to love, poor impulse control and poor moral reasoning predict evil in people with narcissistic and borderline personality disorder just as these qualities cluster and predict evil in psychopaths/sociopaths.
Who to seek out
Surround yourself with people who have a well developed Inner Triangle! Love people who are warm and have a track record of self-sacrifice for others. Trust only those who can control their own impulses. Admire only those who experience embarrassment, guilt and shame. Depend only on those who are dependable. Since sociopaths/psychopaths are con artists, get proof of these qualities by first hand observation before you ascribe them to anyone.
* The NEO PI-R has been used to develop the five factor model of personality. This model can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN: O-openness to experience, C-conscientiousness, E-extraversion, A-agreeableness, N-neuroticism. Openness to experience (O: fantasy, aesthetic, feelings, actions, ideas, values), Conscientiousness (C: competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation), Extraversion (E: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotions), Agreeableness (A: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender mindedness), and Neuroticism (N: anxiousness, angry hostility, trait depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability)
**Twelve traits were consistently identified by Lynam and Widiger as either low or high in psychopaths. The psychopath is low in 5 facets of A (Straightforwardness 1, Altruism 2, Compliance 3, Modesty 4, Tender mindedness 5, three facets of C (dutifulness 6, self-discipline 7, and deliberation 8), and one facet each of N (self-consciousness 9) and E (warmth 10); the psychopath is high in impulsiveness 11 from N and excitement seeking 12 from E.
I know from personal experience that sometimes S-path children are very sexual. My S-path step daughter was always like that…She was only 2 1/2 when her father and I started dating and I still think she is and always has been sexually attracted to her father(my now husband of 30 yrs.)
When she was not much bigger than a toddler she would always be hanging off him, but not in a parent child kind of way…it was just weird..she would look at him, stare into his eyes and have this wicked little smirk on her face….she always tried to kiss him on the mouth…which I put a stop to immediately. I could tell it all made him very uncomfortable, but he never verbalized it…I think he was scared to…you know the old saying that maybe if you don’t say it …it’s not real..to this day (she is now 32) she hugs him a little too long and a little too close in my opinion…she used to be a hairdresser and she cut his hair for years, but when she got these huge DD breat implants all of a sudden he would not let her cut his hair….he made up some lame excuse, but I know that deep down it made him very uncomfortable to have her with those things right in his face and all….but it was not just with him….when she was 3 or 4 she would go up to strange men and look at them seductively and tell them she loved them…..used to embarrass me to death…….now she has been married for about 8 years and her nickname in town is the “—–ville Carnival” everybody gets a ride…and her poor innocent husband just covers for her, just like her father always has…..but I know……anyway my point was that S-path children (at least mine) seem to come pre wired for sexual aggression….thank goodness for this blog where we all can vent……..
Dear Creampuff,
I’m not disputing you on this at all, but I think that even normal children do “sexual” things in that playing with themselves (it feels good) and so on. A friend of mine had a kid my son C’s age that walked around with his hand in his diaper from the time he could walk. LOL
I also know of a 3 yr old who was molested by an older kid and asked his mother to do oral sex on him, and the counselor told the mother what I told Getting it, “Just don’t make a big deal out of it, and tell him that is not okay for mommies and their sons” The kid turned out okay and sexually okay as far as I know and I don’t think he even has a memory of that event.
But it is also possible too that your step daughter may have been sexually molested/traumatized by her P mother or something she saw, or was acting insecure, rather than it being a “sign” of impending psychopathic behavior. Apparently there is also a great amount of mother/child sexual molestation, which is seldom believed or reported. BloggerT has a website about “when mom is the abuser” which is linked here to LF, you might check it out.
Who knows at this point Oxy? I just remember so vividly her being “weird” as a little kid, and now her oldest (7yrs.old) is weird too…..just like her Mom….I have been searching like crazy this afternoon to find that statement about the fruit tree..it was so good, and I really thought it was yours. I was looking over some old posts, it is amazing how you seem to have exactly the right words to say to people when they need them most. What a blessing you are to so many of us…I am glad to see some men on here too. I think sometimes they are so embarrassed at having been “had” they try to hide it. I am so excited about expressing my boundaries. I have been working on that for a little while now, and it is so empowering. I’ve found that I don’t even run to my old crutches like I used to. Praise God……he is showing me that I have cleaned up way more than my share of messes that were not even mine to clean up. These S-path daughters of mine have created their own messes…..they will have to be the ones to clean it up…..this old gal is done!!! Thanks Oxy!
Dear Creampuff,
Thank you I am glad that I have been able to help you! That’s what LF is all about each of us helping others, playing it forward!
Yes, I love the guys here because they share an aspect of it all from a male point of view that is good. Matt also gives us plenty of good legal concepts too.
We’ve all done more than our share of cleaning up I think, too. And the common experiences we seem to have had even though this is a very diverse group, I think helps us too.
Setting boundaries is difficult at first. You may want to discuss them here or with a close friend before doing them. It helps to have somone else say “Yea, that sounds reasonable” because we don’t want to be too strict but not too enablingn either. Different points of view help. Later you can take the training wheels off and validate yourself. I used to bounce mjy boundaries off of son D and he would validate them,, and I would do them. Later, I stopped asking for his validation as I didn’t feel the NEED for validation, I realized I could validate my own decisions. My own judgments! Liberating for sure!!!!
Thank you Creampuff, I do believe and think my son is way hypersexual and I have other kids of mine (not from the P) to compare him to. But, this maneuver he pulled was too adult-like and too rehearsed almost. I think both are at play.
I met someone on Match. I talked to him at length during the two dates and was pretty proud to identify him as a P. I even told him as much and basically made myself very unappealing. Just learned that the guy is married with FIVE kids. and – posing as a single with none. It is so said that humans like this are allowed all the benefits freedom has to offer. I am sorry for his wife/ girlfriend, whoever she is out there. For a man to sit and deny his children is a crime!
I wonder how many children my P has denied. He abducted one, abandoned one, and now my poor baby is going to get his early schooling. …
I have a question, particularly for anyone who has spiritual or religious beliefs.
Is it really possible, for a person who has been bad the majority of their life so far, caused intense pain and suffering to others, and never made any real reprieve …. to become a “good person” because they “behave themselves more” or should I say “better control their urges…” or even “hide the reality about them better”
Apparently my ex S has been to a psychiatrist and got new pills, he got the job as a teacher (pervert), and has the wonderful new woman … he is now ” better than he has ever been … and people are noticing changes….” It makes me so mad, that his friends and family have just brushed under the carpet the intense suffering of others … he has done NOTHING to put back into society, what he took out …. After over 20 years of being a BAD person, who put his own parents on tranquilisers, neglected his daughter, left his son and his mother, used and hit girlfriends … he is suddenly this great wonderful good person because he got a job and a woman who like me has been fooled?
He hasnt even apologised to people for what he has done. Not in any meaningful way. I was told by his friends “dont expect an apology, you wont get one”. Yet they “just want the best for him and want him to get better….” they JUST DONT GET IT, the man is EVIL. Yes, he does have mental illness, but he is a bad person. A good person would not get his own parents to lie on his behalf to the state (as they did about how he had managed to live without working, he was of course working illegally and they gave a statement saying they had given him money). All those close to him have condoned his behaviour by tidying up his mess for him every time and wiping his bottom thereafter.
Is it possible therefore, for a “bad egg” to become freshly good, without any form of repentence or proper treatment? Can “it” remain good…? Can we say we are a good person now we have “changed”, but for half of our life we have made others suffer, lied and cheated?
Shanmoo, all of the medications in the world won’t cause a leopard to change its spots. The spath son is exactly the same way – has all of a sudden become a “Christian” and will (from what I hear) quote passages from the Bible whenever possible ostensibly to prove what a “good Christian” he has become. Still, he remarried without telling his younger brother, gave a bogus wedding date/place/time, and continues to harm others using this cloak of religion as an excuse.
The medications might keep the person that you’re speaking about on an even emotional keel, but the behaviors are NOT going to change. Not for good. In order for a person to make a significant change, they must address the past and take ownership of what they have done to others. Not in a general sweep of a blanket apology, “I’m sorry about those things.” Taking ownership means saying, “Shanmoo, I really hurt you by doing the following things: ______. I am truly sorry for having done them, and I never intend to harm anyone else, again.”
Psychiatrists are notorious for medicating the symptoms and not delving into the deep, dark realms of the soul. This is why I feel that medications are useless for spaths. They might treat the symptoms, but they will never change the patterns.
Brightest blessings.
Dear Shamoo,
Sometimes Psychopaths are ALSO bi-polar and the symptions of the BI-polar, (moods up and down, used to be called manic-depressive) may improve but the LACK OF CONSCIENCE is never fixed, so they are just able to FAKE it better.
It is frequentlyu found that psychopaths have bi-polar, have ADHD or all the above. For some reason too, a higher percentage of them are LEFT HANDED. Not sure why, but those are some things that go together with psychopathic traits. I am sure there are other things as well.
So if he has “improved” with a pill, it is just his ADDITIONAL problems that ARE treatable, not the Psychopathic part. Just makes him a better FAKER!
Buttons my P son can almost quote the Bible verbatum! But he still doesn’t get the apology, he just cannot bring himself to say the words “I’m sorry” he has TOO MUCH PRIDE TO LOWER HIMSELF TO ADMIT HE WAS WRONG. LOL Which with all the other lies he tells you would think a fake apology would be easy for him, but he just WILL NOT DO IT!!!! LOL
A totally different concept of evil, just noting….
I realize that from the moment the sociopath was in my life, I started to have terrifying experiences which seemed to actually involve an entity in my presence that I could not see, only feel. This sounds CRAZY, I know, but I want to share in case anyone else maybe had a similar experience. I feel weird even sharing this.
I remember early on, right after I started talking with the sociopath and getting to know him, a few nights later I was wide awake in bed and felt a cold hand attempt to strangle me, twice. It was the most soul-chilling experience. I felt the cold fingers, the skin of this hand. No one was there. Throughout the time the sociopath was in my life, I felt as though I was always being watched. On one occasion, I panicked and stood frozen staring at a doorway because I felt a dark presence there. My cat walked through this doorway and jumped into the air and started to panic as well. I immediately called the sociopath, because my ‘gut’ told me that this dark thing was attached to him somehow.
There are too many examples to count.
But I realized just a few days ago that I’ve been NC for a few weeks now and I have completely lost that eerie feeling that I am being watched or accompanied by a hostile presence.
Okay, I know this all might sound completely nuts, but I’m willing to put myself out there and sound crazy just to be honest about my experience and try to heal from it.
Oh, also, for a few months, I smelled burning all the time. I woke up in the middle of the night a few times thinking the house was on fire and went running around trying to find it. I am allergic to cigarettes, and one night I woke up gagging as though there was actual smoke in my room. I was looking for fires at school, on the metro, at shopping malls. I kept smelling burning.
I never made an association really until now that I am NC. It’s all stopped.
Panther,
That sounds to me like vague anxiety or mild panic attacks, and could well be from having some “sense” that there was something wrong somewhere, but you just weren’t able to focus on WHAT was “off” so you “felt” this presence in your life. I can relate to that for sure. Anxiety comes in many forms, and it is different from “fear” as with “fear” you see a tiger and you are AFRAID, but with anxiety, you think there MIGHT BE A TIGER OUT THERE SOMEWHERE and you are Anxious. The body responds to fear and anxiety both with the same chemical hormone release of the “fight or flight” syndrome so physically you can’t tell which is which, fear or anxiety.
The body releases adrenaline which has effects on the organ systems of the body, it narrows our focus of vision so it is like looking through a tube, the blood is routed around our stomachs to the lungs and muscles, and we become very strong, able to run faster and harder or fight harder. That’s why our tummies don’t digest food well when we are stressed, because digesting food isn’t important if you are being chased by a tiger. It can also upset our bowels and give us the “runs.”
After the hormones wear off we feel fatigued and very tired because the glucose in our blood is depleted and our muscles have used up all the stores of energy.
The brain/mind cause physical changes in our bodies, and vice versa. So when you feel anxious, stressed or scared. STOP, ask yourself what you are feeling and how you are responding, then if you are stressed and anxiious or fearful, exercise your body—walk or run, but burn off the stress hormones with physical exertion. Then take a nice relaxing shower or bath and rest both mind and body.